Like a multicoloured butterfly exploding in slow motion, The Kooks’ fourth album Listen is messy but not too messy. The erratic, screechy sentimentality of ‘Around Town’ opens the album, which is the brainchild of front man Luke Pritchard’s creative coupling with hip-hop producer Inflo. Gospel singers ooze out ‘Oh Yeah’ as a trumpet toots; there is a gaudy, jazzy keyboard solo, with syncopated hand claps and percussion crashing in later. Once the wave breaks it is clear that the clean-cut indie boys have moved away from their late-Britpop origins, but may have found themselves lost at sea in a storm of sound.

Pritchard refers to Listen as a "world music album", but this is a world of ‘ethnic’ rugs and ‘oriental’ drugs rammed into a London pad. This is seaside pop with fun-fair flourishes and a dance-orientated sound edging towards R&B, with retro instruments and ska thrown into the mix. Pritchard’s address to the father who died when he was young in the piano ballad ‘See Me Now’ makes for a song that shouldn’t be average, but is.

From the personal to the political, ‘It Was London’ is a mammoth, staggering anthem analysing the London riots. The lightweight voices of the band repeat "Can you believe this is London?", yet it seems like we can and they can’t. The climax comes in the opening soulful notes of ‘Down’, a far but welcome cry from Luke’s usual nasal vocals. With a vibrancy unrivalled by the other tracks, the new direction of ‘Down’ is startling but exciting and it comes too late in the album. The other tracks are hazy dreams: falsetto vocals swerve into electro-pop zones in ‘Dreams’, with ‘Sweet Emotion’ falling back into describing the ecstasy of love, as has been done better before.

In 2006 Pritchard was quoted as saying: "I think rock and roll is just getting started" and at times it seems like The Kooks are just getting started. This is both a criticism and a compliment indicating that Listen is perhaps too much, too late.